By Ken Desselus
Special Correspondent

Here’s a little something from the small world department. Recently, my wife Toni and I visited long-time friends, Art and Jan Jones, in Chattanooga, Tenn., where Art is a hospice chaplain. The Joneses are familiar with Bastrop County because they often visited us here.

Here’s the small world connection – Art took me along with him to visit one of his favorite patients because she used to live in Smithville. I took a pad and pencil because I hoped she would feed my insatiable hunger for any historical fact about Bastrop County.

I met a beautiful and gracious older woman – a very special lady named Juliette Owens Agee.

Though mostly housebound and somewhat dependent on help from others, she was lively, happy and eager to share. Art is her “caregiver,” but I got the distinct impression that it is she who always makes him feel better. I know I was happier when we left.

And here’s what I learned: Care-giving is obviously in her genetic makeup. She was a life-long school teacher from a family that serves others, like her granddaughter who last year embarked on a career as a public servant, working at the White House, after graduating from Harvard and Princeton. More important to me, though, are her memories of her care-giving uncle, Dr. Charles Clinton Owens, an important fixture in the Smithville community during the first half of the 20th century.

After graduating from medical school in Nashville, Dr. Owens cashed in his only possession – a bag of apples – in exchange for a train ticket as far as the money would take him. That turned out to be Lawton, Okla., where he started a practice and married the love of his life, Mary. Soon the newly-weds were on another train, arriving in Smithville in about 1912, where he opened a medical practice that lasted until his death in 1958.

Because Dr. Owens was African American, he had difficulty finding someone to sell him a house, but he persisted and eventually settled into a place on Harris Street. There he and Mary reared four children: two sons who became doctors and two daughters who became teachers. Over time, Dr. Owens established himself as a highly respected professional who attended to all comers – black, white and “Germans from out in the country.” He delivered their babies, cured their illnesses and operated on them at the hospital in Bastrop.

Juliette believed that his very light complexion assisted in his gaining acceptance from whites more readily than if he had been darkerskinned. In those days of racial segregation when “whites only” rules prevailed, she recalled that this same reason also enhanced her life and that of her cousins.

Still, Dr. Owens accommodated himself to the prevailing social order and did not allow his children to take advantage of their somewhat elevated status. For example, he told them when they went to the local clothing store never to try on hats because other African Americans were prohibited from doing so. He reasoned that doing so might make them seem presumptive to their friends.

At age 14, Juliette moved to Smithville to live with her uncle and aunt after her mother died. It was 1937, and, having been born in the South, she was not surprised to find the place almost totally segregated. She recalled having to sit in the balcony at the picture show and being able to dine at only one eatery – the barbecue place. She attended the all-black school only for a year because her uncle sent her to live with other relatives in Oklahoma in order to graduate from an accredited high school.

A year later, she returned to Bastrop County and enrolled in Samuel Huston College in Austin (now Huston-Tillotson University). She rode the bus home on weekends and remembered one memorable trip when the driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white man. She didn’t say a thing but kept her seat and he finally stopped insisting.

After finishing college, Juliette taught at a one room county school for African Americans. She couldn’t remember the names of any of her ten or so students but was impressed that most of them carried lunch in syrup buckets stocked with biscuits and bacon, with syrup in the bottom.

When Camp Swift opened, it also was segregated. Juliette secured a job at “Service Club No. 3,” in charge of recreation and social functions for black soldiers.

While living in a guest house at the camp, she ran a library, organized dances and card games and supervised the building where visiting wives stayed. “I made sure they had marriage licenses before checking them in,” she said. She also recruited girls from colleges in Austin to come for parties. German prisoners of war practiced English on her when they came to wax and clean the floors.

She fondly remembered New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who visited after a speaking engagement at the University of Texas. During this time, she also assisted Dr. Owens on Tuesdays at an office in Bastrop where black soldiers came for treatment of diseases they didn’t want their officers to know about.

After marrying a doctor herself, Juliette moved permanently to Chattanooga where she taught school and reared a family. After Dr. Owens’ death, Mary lived for another decade or so, attended by her family, especially one of their sons, a doctor living in Prairie View.

I imagine that few of us in Bastrop remember or ever knew about Dr. Owens. From the impression I received from his niece, however, I am certain we would have admired him. Her grace and charm reflect what I imagine endeared him to his patients and neighbors. He was obviously an outstanding citizen and a credit to the medical profession of our county.